Content note: This is an essay about alcohol and sex, and touches on some of the consent violations that can occur when these things are mixed. Nothing particularly graphic or violent is contained herein.

I’ve been reading a great memoir about a woman’s recovery from alcoholism (The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, if you’re curious) and, while alcohol addiction isn’t something I’ve personally struggled with, there’s a lot in it that I’m resonating with – particularly the stuff about addictions being a response to a persistent inner feeling of lack and unlovedness, and the stuff about how alcohol can make the notion of consent a bit fuzzy even when it’s clearly not.

In a way, it’s totally unsurprising that I now make my living mostly giving people advice on how to masturbate and what devices to use when they do so – because I’ve been looking at “masturbation techniques” websites since I was quite young. I think they’re a brilliant, invaluable resource, both for people who’ve never touched themselves sexually before and for people who’ve been doing it for years, or even decades. There is always more to learn about your own body and what makes it feel good, even if you’ve got tried-and-true methods you’re hesitant to deviate from.

The site of this kind that I remember most vividly from my youth is MyMasturbation.com (I’ve linked to an archived version, because the current version lacks the early-oughts internet aesthetic and isn’t organized as well). It allowed users to submit their own masturbation technique suggestions, and organized them into categories, which were sometimes straightforwardly named (“anal dildos,” “clit – rubbing,” “slowly”) and sometimes a bit more mysterious or surprising (“food – misc.,” “unusual,” “curling iron”). I was new to the world of jerkin’ it, and had only experimented with classics like my bathtub faucet and teddy bear – so this cornucopia of alternate suggestions felt like an embarrassment of riches.

A friend recommended the all-bisexual season of the reality dating show Are You the One? and of course my partner and I had to watch it together. As with dating reality shows in general, this one was very engrossing (at least if you find human connection interesting, which I imagine most of us do) and had a lot of pertinent lessons to teach about how attractions and relationships function.

As is de rigueur for its genre, Are You the One? puts some contestants in a big-ass house and forces them through a series of physical challenges and emotional gauntlets over the course of several weeks, in order to earn a large sum of money. But the gimmick of this particular show is that all of the contestants have been pre-interviewed about their personalities, lifestyles, and romantic histories, and their friends and families have also been consulted, in order for offscreen matchmakers to pair up each contestant with their “perfect match” amongst the other contestants. The players’ job is to figure out who’s matched with who, and eventually guess all 8 couples correctly, by getting to know each other and making guesses about who’s a perfect match, which the show can confirm or deny in various convoluted ways.

I’ve been playing so much Breath of the Wild lately. SO MUCH. An amount that makes my eyes hurt and deprives me of sleep and seems to make hours of the day disappear in a snap.

If you don’t know it, don’t worry; video game knowledge is not a prerequisite for understanding the points of this piece. But to fill you in briefly, it’s an open-world game for the Nintendo Switch in the Legend of Zelda series, of which I had played exactly zero games before starting BotW. I’m not normally into the type of video game where you run around fighting goblins with swords and looking for treasure chests in dungeons, but friends (who knew me well) kept telling me I would love this game, so I finally picked it up.

Being wanted, feeling wanted, is a type of intoxication. Especially if you’ve never, or rarely, felt it before.

Some of my most vivid memories – the ones that are encoded in technicolor and carved into my neurons – are from early experiences of being desired. This is the double-edged blade of the way women are taught to see our desirability as one of the main things defining our value: the despair of those moments when we’ve felt starkly undesirable are almost worth it, for the druglike highs of being liked, being wanted, being craved.

Content note: This essay discusses me sexualizing myself, in a totally consensual but sometimes vaguely “yikes” way, when I was a teenager.

I was 15 when I discovered the website SuicideGirls. I was also 15 when I came out as bisexual. That’s probably not a coincidence.

Last night I went to an off-Broadway show called Hyprov where I, along with several other audience volunteers, was hypnotized on stage in front of a huge crowd of people.

The conceit of Hyprov is that the hypnotist whittles down the initial big group of volunteers to a smaller group of the 5 most “suggestible” people, who are then coached by an improvisor into doing various improv scenarios while in trance. I made it through some initial rounds but didn’t get into the final 5, which was fine with me as I wanted to watch the show just as much as I wanted to be in it, and you can’t really do both.

I’m currently sitting in the boarding lounge of an airport, waiting to fly to New York to attend a family wedding my spouse is officiating in the States. And so, naturally, I’m thinking about the hell that is air travel.

Sometimes people seem to think being in a long-distance marriage is glamorous, what with all the jetsetting. And certainly, I’m blessed to be able to travel when I need to (and, pre-pandemic and maybe again someday, when I want to). There is glamour in certain elements of travel – I have a go-to minimalistically chic “uniform” I usually fly in, for instance, consisting of a slinky black slip dress, black leggings, a black cashmere cardigan and black leather boots, and I’ll admit I never tire of that feeling when you step out of the baggage claim hall and into a familiar city, happy to be back.

(Content note: this essay is about a dildo shaped like a gun, so I will be discussing guns and the danger they pose, including mentions of murder and being held at gunpoint. None of these things have actually happened to me; I’ll just be discussing them theoretically. I also touch on knife play, fear play, and trauma from emotional abuse.)

As a financial domination task in order to earn their freedom from chastity, I recently “commanded” my partner (air-quotes ‘cause it was consensual and pre-negotiated) to buy me the Hole Punch Evolver, a dildo shaped like a gun. I’ve wanted it for years but never quite been able to justify the steep price tag, so I was thrilled that my beloved was willing to foot the bill so we could experience the oddity and beauty of this dildo together.

There's a clothing-optional beach in Toronto called Hanlan's Point – actually, it's across the lake, on the Toronto Islands. It's one of only two officially recognized nude beaches in all of Canada, apparently. And somehow, until last week, I had never gone.

Oh, don't worry, I definitely knew about it. I've been invited, on several occasions, to go there for beachside birthday parties and summertime hangs with sex-positive friends. But I had never managed to actually go, and it's for a reason that's kind of embarrassing to admit: I was too nervous. But not about the nudity.

Being naked in public is no big deal to me, to be honest. Sure, it always feels weird for a few seconds when I first take off my clothes – say, when I'm about to get into the heated pool at my local sex club, or when I'm with a group of pals at Pride and we decide to walk around topless in the summer sun – but I quickly acclimate. Nude bodies are just bodies; they're not monstrous, or shocking, or worthy of judgment, as long as they're being displayed in appropriate settings. I've been going to events like all-nude Body Pride workshops and public porn shoots since I was 20, and I'm even more confident about my shape and size now than I was then. It no longer phases me to be naked in public (as long as I've consented to it and so have the people around me, obviously).

No, the thing that troubled me about visiting Hanlan's was much sillier. I was nervous about the travel. See, to get to the Islands, you have to take a ferry boat from a station at the southernmost part of the city. Because of the ways my anxiety manifests, the journey stressed me out on logistical and social levels. How would I know where to go? Would the ticket-takers look at me judgmentally, knowing I planned to strip nude on the other side of the ride? Would people think I was weird for taking the ferry alone, even if I was going to meet friends? How would I figure out when and where to actually get naked? Would people aggressively flirt with me, and if so, how would I fend them off? Did I need to bring a towel, a folding chair, a canister of pepper spray? What would I do if I needed to use the bathroom? And so on and so forth.

“Competency kink” is one of those terms that often makes people’s eyes light up when I mention it because they recognize this concept from their own life. I think many (most? all?) of us are attracted to competency, but there are people for whom competency can make or break an attraction, and I am one of those people.

Be it the local barista whose latte art is legendary, the fast-fingered guitar player busking on a street corner, or the movie star whose emotive eyes light up entire theatres, I can develop deeply intense crushes on people just because they’re so damn good at what they do. I think this is one of the reasons I value competence so highly in myself, too (and am self-critical when I perceive myself to be incompetent as something I am doing): I know that it not only makes me skilled or talented, but to a significant portion of the population, it also makes me hot. Win-win!

Here are 5 people who are all, frankly, attractive anyway, but are made even moreso by the fact that they’re extremely fucking competent. Warning: there is fangirlish gushing ahead.

1) The YouTuber who makes cocktail videos. There are multiple layers to this man’s competency. First, obviously, he knows cocktails: he can rattle off the history of seemingly any drink, and has both the mental and physical skills necessary to create entirely new recipes from his own imagination. He’s great with a shaker, can crack an ice cube into pieces with one strategic tap of a barspoon, and improvises new drinks the way a jazz sax player improvises a solo. But on top of his cocktail wizardry, there’s also his video production competence: his editing is always impeccable, his set is well-dressed, and he brings a telegenic whimsy to every video. If anyone was ever born to make YouTube videos about cocktails, it’s this man.

What do unscrupulous sex toy companies and sexually overconfident men have in common? Well, quite a few things. Both are prone to talking the talk without knowing how to walk the walk (or fuck the fuck). You can spend money or time on/with them in the hopes that sexual pleasure will follow and just end up disappointed. Your friends might say, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” and you might know they’re right to be cautious but have trouble actually cutting ties. And people and sex toys can both look much prettier in pictures than they do when they’re actually in your bed.

But the key commonality I’m pondering today is this: both sex toy companies and self-important players might assure you that they can definitely get you off – and both might be spectacularly wrong about that.

I am always skeptical of anyone who claims to have a perfect (or very high) success rate when it comes to making people come, whether we’re talking about a Tinder cad or a sex tech corporation. Even setting aside the possibility that some of the people in their history have been faking or lying (and even if you think you know, you can’t really know for certain), centering orgasm to that degree is already sort of a yellow flag. Not everyone needs an orgasm to be satisfied, and IMO the question shouldn’t be “How and when am I gonna make you come?” but rather, “In what ways would you like me to give you pleasure?” For a lot of people, “give me an orgasm” will be on that list, but it’s nice to check.

When a sex toy company hyperfocuses on orgasm in their marketing copy, it makes me think about those PornHub ads that implore you, “Play this cartoon porn game and you’ll come in 40 seconds.” I don’t even want to come in 40 seconds. I want to feel a lot of pleasure and then come whenever it makes sense to come. Likewise, when someone who’s never made me come before tells me, in a DM or a sext or even over drinks, “I’m gonna make you come so hard,” or “I’m gonna make you come so many times,” I always just want to laugh. They don’t even know what’s involved in that, or if they’re physically and mentally capable of doing what it takes. And, again, they are painting a picture of sex that has orgasm as its sole goal, when (I feel like a broken record here) I’d rather have sex where pleasure is the focus.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit this, as someone who literally makes my living writing about (among other things) the ethics of consent, but I am frequently complicit in my own sexual boundaries being steamrolled. (And yes, content note: this essay will discuss sex that is technically consensual but definitely reluctant.)

This is something I’ve been working on in therapy recently. I had started to notice that there would be many situations in which I didn’t really feel like having sex but nonetheless offered a blowjob or somesuch to whoever I was with, because of a nebulous anxiety I felt throughout my body that seemed to insist this was the only workable solution to what seemed like a very pressing problem. Given that I obviously know I’m well within my rights to say no to sex for any reason at all, this was a bit perplexing to me.

Of course, a history of trauma can make a person generally more prone to behaviors like fawning, freezing and submitting, especially when they’re in situations that are emotionally reminiscent of their trauma(s). But upon digging deeper on this particular issue with my therapist, I discovered that there’s a bit more to it than that. What I learned is that I pre-emptively offer sexual favors to dates because, underneath my seemingly sexually confident exterior, I have such a deep and pervasive sense of shame and worthlessness that I worry these dates wouldn’t like me if not for sex. I’m so afraid of that moment – “Oh, you don’t want to blow me? Well, that’s all I wanted here, so fuck this, I’m leaving” – that I proactively take steps to avoid it, by offering to do things I only sorta want to do. The trauma logic goes: it’s easier (at least in theory) to give head than to be faced with the certainty of my own unlovability.

GIven that I’m actively working through issues like this one in therapy, I’ve realized that I’m not in a good place right now to have casual sex, or even sex with people I’m casually dating, because I simply don’t trust myself to uphold my own boundaries and keep myself safe in that arena right now. I’ve seen how succumbing to these trauma-borne impulses can ultimately just re-traumatize me, and I want to step outside of that behavioral loop for a while so I can hopefully put an end to it.

I took some time off playing The Sims recently, not because I got bored of the endless shenanigans you can pull in that game, but because my computer had started to get too slow to comfortably run it. Passing time with your Sims just isn’t as fun when even the 3x speed-up function moves at a snail’s crawl.

But then I got myself a new computer (for almost entirely non-Sims-related reasons) and re-downloaded the game and all the expansion packs, and it’s been sorta nice to reconnect with the side of myself that can glance at the clock after a hyper-focused Sims session and realize it’s somehow 4:37 a.m. all of a sudden.

Recently I was trying to fly back from New York where I'd been staying with my spouse, and my return flight got canceled after I’d already been waiting around the airport for several hours. My body and brain were very done with airports and needed a break before attempting the journey again, so I had the airline rebook the flight for six days later.

However, since this was an unplanned extension of my trip, I hadn’t done my laundry recently, having been planning to do it when I got home. I still had clean socks, shirts, pants and dresses left, but was completely out of clean underwear, and I didn’t want to do the laundry before getting back home because I am needlessly stubborn and also lazy. So I needed to get a few pairs of underwear to tide me over until my flight.

My spouse and I went out for dinner one night and I mentioned this conundrum to them. We decided to go on a little shopping excursion after our meal, since we were in a neighborhood peppered with stores like J. Crew, Aerie, Gap and H&M. We figured it would be a five-minute detour on our way back to their place.

It was not. We went to store after store and literally none of them had any women’s underwear in stock. We looked high and low. We asked around. Nothing.

A few of my friends have recurring patterns in their romantic lives that have continually plagued them over multiple years and throughout multiple relationships. I tend to notice these, because I have similar patterns myself.

We meet a new person. We see or hear or feel something that resonates with us about this person, so we latch onto them psychologically. They quickly come to seem like the sexiest, sparkliest savior we’ve ever met. We spend as much time as we can with them, and even more time fantasizing about them, journaling about them, talking friends’ ears off about them.

My mind often wanders during sex, especially sex with someone I don’t know well and am not all that emotionally intimate with. Usually it wanders to predictable places – do I look okay? am I making the right amount of sounds? are they having fun? – but sometimes it wanders to art instead.

I’m using the word “art” in the broadest sense here, one that includes writing and music alongside visual art. It’s a big, big part of my life, and consumes a lot of my waking hours – either actually making the art or just thinking about making it, which is part of the creation process too. Especially when I’m knee-deep in a particular project, I often walk around in a sort of haze, taking in what’s happening around me but secretly stewing on whatever artistic problem has been needling me. What’s the right line for the end of the second verse of that one song I’m writing? What’s the right angle (so to speak) for the dildo review on my docket? What strange thoughts of mine can spiral into a newsletter? (Hello, I love you, thank you for reading.)

Making art is arguably one of the most erotic things I ever do, depending on how you define “erotic.” Some people say that eroticism is about pleasures of the body, whether those pleasures be having great sex, eating a big slice of cake or wading into the ocean. (Or perhaps all three at once, if you’re lucky.) But I also think there can be something genuinely erotic about the spark of joy and recognition I feel when a piece clicks into place within something I’m working on: the perfect metaphor, the perfect rhyme. It’s a visceral “aha!” moment that feels as intense, as rapturous and exciting, as when a partner stumbles across exactly the right spot on my body and touches me there in exactly the way I need.

I think one of the reasons these moments feel so powerful for me is that they give me a sudden, intense boost of self-esteem. I mean that in the literal sense: esteem for myself, respect for myself. An entire day of moping around, staring at a blank screen and feeling like a washed-up hack can be counteracted in one singular moment, when I have a sudden idea that even I have to admit is brilliant. It helps me remember why I make art in the first place (aside from the obvious: money, survival), and that I am indeed talented enough to “deserve” the money and survival that art-making affords me. (I’ve put “deserve” in quotes because capitalism is fake and everyone deserves to survive, regardless of the work they do or don’t do. Deservingness is a feeling, not a fact.)

For six years, I wrote down every single sexual encounter I ever had in a spreadsheet. It documented data like number of orgasms had by me and my partner(s), number of times I’d previously slept with each partner (to track whether my enjoyment increased after multiple encounters, which it usually does), which sex acts we did and which sex toys we used. As of this year, I’ve stopped keeping track, and it feels good.

I think my initial efforts to chronicle my sex life in this way were borne from desperation and insecurity. After a year-and-a-half-long dry spell in the wake of a long-term relationship ending, I finally started having sex again – sporadically and nervously – and it felt so momentous that I wanted to write it down, so I could look back on each entry and feel proud of myself. At first it was just a list I kept in a notebook, but then I decided to go whole-hog and make it into a digital file I could access from any of my devices. As my eyes swept over each row, my confidence grew, as I could see empirically that I was desired. (It's not that simple, but it felt like it was.)

Of course, because it’s my job to write about my sex life, I quickly came to realize that my spreadsheet was useful to me on a professional level as well. I could glance back at the data to see how often I’d used various sex toys, to revisit certain sexual memories in order to write about them, and to summarize overall trends in my sexual satisfaction (like that fucking in an alley never resulted in orgasm for me but fucking in my own bed, with my own toys, almost always did). I even started packaging each year’s data in a neat little “sextistics” blog post come December, which always filled me with glee to put together because of how nerdy it all was.

Many people in my life expressed confusion about my spreadsheet habit, including some of the people I had sex with. I used to whip out my phone post-bang to make some notes in my file, sometimes explaining to my date in a jokey tone what I was doing. Mostly it was greeted with slightly bewildered amusement, but sometimes people seemed so mystified that I had a hard time imagining why they were even attracted to me at all if they were put off by sexual nerdiness.

Content note: I talk about sexual coercion / pressure in this essay but it’s not the main focus of the piece, and none of the sex I talk about in this essay was non-consensual, just sometimes a bit reluctant.

I’ve long thought that enthusiasm is one of the most important qualities in a sexual partner. As a person who has what the sexologist Emily Nagoski would call “responsive desire,” I often don’t feel much of a pull toward having sex until someone else has conveyed their own desire and gotten the ball rolling. In other words, whereas for some people, desire precedes the process of pursuing and achieving physical arousal, for me it works the opposite way: it’s often only once I’ve become physically aroused (by touching, or kissing, or porn, or erotica, or whatever) that I actually feel any mental or emotional desire to have sex.

Sixth-grade graduation wasn’t a big deal, but felt like one. We were moving on from elementary school to middle school, a demarcation that many institutions don’t even have. We felt so important, at age 12 – like we’d reached the top of the social pyramid at our little school. We were high on the achievement of it, paired with the anxiety about splitting up and going off to middle schools where our entire mental database of social experiences up to that point could mean nothing in the face of new, shifting dynamics.

We didn’t get drunk at the 6th-grade graduation, because, well, we were 12, and it happened during the daytime, supervised by teachers we'd known since we were 4 years old. But the energy crackling between us did have a drunken fizziness to it, that disinhibiting sense of “this could be our last chance” and “will any of this matter tomorrow?”

1. Betty-Sue hates to inconvenience anyone, least of all her neighbors, for fear of what they might think. But her husband’s company potluck is tonight, she’s signed up to bake a cake, and she’s a quarter-cup short on sugar. Her knocks ring out sharply on the neighbors’ cool blue oak door. She’s biting her rosy pink lower lip anxiously when Mary answers. “Well, Betty-Sue! Aren’t you a pretty picture?” the bouncy-haired brunette exclaims. Her voice is low, almost gravelly. Betty-Sue doesn’t smoke or drink or stay out late partying, in part because she never wanted to become a husky-voiced woman of loose morals, like Mary, whose husband is often out of town and who has no children. Sometimes jazz music drifts out Mary’s window and into Betty-Sue’s late at night when she’s scrubbing her own husband’s shoe prints out of the entryway rug, and the cool-eyed blonde wishes she’d allowed herself bigger ambitions than making an insurance agent’s house sparkle, handsome and dependable though he may be. “I need to borrow a quarter-cup of sugar,” Betty-Sue manages at last, her throat dry. She licks her lips, a nervous tic. Mary gazes at her wolfishly, her Saturday-afternoon bathrobe sagging open just slightly at the bust. “Oh, I’ll give you more than that,” Mary says, and beckons her inside.

2. Sinatra and Brando find themselves at the same poker table, late one night in a hot and smoky casino. The tension is palpable as soon as Frank sits down. Everyone knows about their ongoing feud, the mounting tension on the set of Guys and Dolls, the tussles out behind the MGM soundstage. Frank’s signature blue eyes churn like an angry sea. Marlon’s almost grinning; it’s unclear whether he’s delighted by the cards he’s been dealt or the world-famous singer staring at him with the ill-concealed rage of an elevated barroom brawler. When Brando wins big, and pulls some of Frank’s fortune toward him in the form of cascading colorful chips, Frank’s eyes go volcanic. “Meet me out back in 10 and we’ll settle this like men,” he says, getting up and striding away from the table. Brando pockets his winnings and quirks a smile at the fur-clad dowager on his left. “Think he’ll let me kiss him with tongue this time?” he asks, and the old woman titters like it’s a joke.

3. Joe is ruined. He bet his last fifty dollars on Silver Spoon, the grey racehorse who just twisted her ankle in the final run-up to the finish line. She was overtaken by Royal Orbit in a flash, and now, Joe knows, he’ll have nothing to show for himself when he returns home to his wife and kids – nothing but an empty-eyed stare, a gambling problem and a mortgage payment that’s still well overdue. “Hey, mister, you dropped this,” says some whippersnapper Joe can barely bring into focus through his teary haze. It’s his hat, the wool trilby he wears to the track for good luck. So much for that. It must have slipped off his head sometime while he was writhing around in the unadulterated agony of a gambler whose hunch was dreadfully wrong. “Thanks, kid,” he says distractedly. The kid’s a tall drink of water, dark-haired and tweed-clad. Probably letting off some steam at the track in between classes at the local business college. Joe remembers those days. “Say, how’s about I buy us both a drink at the joint around the corner? Looks like you could use one, mister,” the kid says, his pale eyes wide. Joe would argue but he can’t – not when he doesn’t even have enough money for his usual highball, and not when his head is swimming so much that this young man at the track looks more appealing to him now than Joe’s own wife, whose face he knows will fall when he tells her the bad news. “That sounds swell,” Joe says, reluctantly at first. “I’d like to pay you back somehow, though. We’ll figure something out.”

4. Someone knocks at Marilyn’s dressing room door while she’s crying inside, and she’s immediately flooded with regret. Was she being too loud? Will the studio find out about her emotional problems, her drug dependencies, the affair the tabloids insist she’s having with her director? Worse yet, do they already know? She says “Come in” out of sheer habit, all too welcoming, too worried and worrisome. But it’s just Jane, her costar and friend, whose hazel eyes are wide with concern. “You okay, doll? I heard you crying but I don’t think anyone else did.” Marilyn dabs her tears away with a monogrammed handkerchief her ex-husband had made for her, and that just makes her cry more. When Jane slips inside the dressing room, closes the door behind her and sweeps Marilyn up in her long arms, the blonde realizes she can’t remember a time she’s been this close to another woman, felt this safe with another woman. Every other dame is either a competitor or a critic, or (worse) both at once. Jane is just Jane. “Shhh, baby, it’s okay,” Jane says as Marilyn’s tears continue to fall, and when their lips find each other’s in the soft light, neither of them thinks about whether they’re ruining their lipstick.

5. James Dean shows up at the party in the hills already half-drunk and bone-tired, with a bottle of whiskey under one arm. “Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,” he mutters to Natalie when she opens the door, all gussied up in her best hostess attire. She looks worried but not surprised. After that, the evening slides by in vignettes, with Jimmy first sidling up to young starlets in the conversation pit and then arguing with Sal about film history over old fashioneds. But things really take a turn when Natalie totters into the living room and stage-whispers, “Jimmy, come meet your biggest fan.” Propelled by ego, James staggers to his feet and follows her right to Elvis, who’s still sheepishly untying his shoes in the entryway. “No blue suede tonight?” Jimmy jokes, and Elvis laughs like it’s actually funny, like he hasn't heard it hundreds of times before. “Oh, stop!” Natalie half-shrieks, half-giggles. “Elvis loved your latest picture, Jimmy. He’s dying to talk about it.” She wanders back toward the group, leaving the two men alone in the foyer to gaze at each other, one warmly, one coolly. “I’m a fan of yours too, y’know,” Jimmy offers over the rim of his glass. “Thought you looked mighty kissable on the Sullivan show, if I’m honest.” Elvis blushes a little, glances this way and that, and then backs Jimmy up against the wall by the door. “I had the same thought about you in Rebel,” he whispers low against James’ whiskey-wet lips, and suddenly both men are proving the wildest rumors that’ve ever been printed about either of them, and not caring for a second about it. Somewhere nearby in a shadowy corridor, Sal Mineo watches, grins, and tries not to make a sound.

It usually happens about a year after my last tattoo was inked onto my skin. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. But it always hits me eventually.

The feeling of getting a tattoo is so specific, so weird, that I find it hard to convey to people who haven’t experienced it. Obviously it varies from person to person (and tattoo artist to tattoo artist), but in my particular body, it feels like:

• someone stabbing me very quickly, very shallowly, over and over again, in one contained area, with a remarkably tiny needle

• a sharp sunburn or other sudden burn on the location

• the type of pain that, in a sadomasochistic kink scene, would make me think about saying “yellow,” like it was a viable option on the distant horizon, but not actually say it

Due to being overworked and overwhelmed in both my professional life and my personal life, lately I’ve been having a tough time with sex.

I am a person who likes sex (as you may have inferred from, y’know, my whole deal), so it always raises some flags for me when I notice myself feeling resistant or closed-off to it. It’s like a dam suddenly going up in a normally free-flowing river – where did that come from?

I think I own more red lipsticks than I own any other type of item. (Well, except for sex toys, but that’s because I review them professionally, okay?!)

I’ve just always liked red lipstick, for as long as I can remember, so I’ve accumulated lots of them over the years. Like a little black dress or a versatile vibrator, you could be just fine owning only one, and many people do – but you could just as easily own dozens and use each in slightly different ways.

Note: I wanted to perhaps write something about pregnancy or abortion this week, on account of the terrible horrible no-good news out of the Supreme Court. But honestly, I am so exhausted by the aggravation of it all that I don’t feel up to it. I can, however, write about some sex I had recently, and encourage you to donate to an abortion fund if you're able. Now back to our scheduled programming.

One of the hardest things about being in a long-distance relationship is saying goodbye at the end of a visit. It can be vexing to even wrap your mind around the fact that this person, who you’ve only just gotten used to seeing in three dimensions again, is about to go back to essentially existing inside your phone for a while. Sometimes the sadness drifts in preemptively over the days before a scheduled farewell; other times, it lays in wait until the moments right before, triggering a teary meltdown and a deep, primal longing to shout, “Please don’t go.”

My spouse and I live 500 miles apart, and have experimented with many, many different techniques for mitigating painful goodbyes over the nearly 4 and a half years we’ve been together. We’ve instituted end-of-visit debriefs, where we discuss over drinks or brunch the best things we did together recently and when we might see each other next. We’ve started saying goodbye only in private locations, ever since we tried to do it in a New York City subway station once and found that it just compounded the problem. We’ve made a habit of speaking by phone the night one of us arrives back home, as if to reaffirm that our connection still sparkles despite the distance.

1. If they can’t make me laugh, they probably can’t make me come.

2. Never show up late to a first date; it makes it seem like you don’t care, or don’t respect the other person’s time. If you do have to be late for whatever reason, send a properly apologetic text as soon as you know you’ll be late, containing your ETA if possible.

3. Dates where you can actually talk are better than dates where you’re just watching something or doing an activity side-by-side, at least if your goal is to get to know the person you’re on a date with.

4. Always bring condoms, lube, and a small vibrator, because you never know.

5. Someone who refuses to accept a “no” in one context, however innocuous (e.g. “No, I won’t let you pay your half of the bill even though you have firmly expressed that you want to”), will often refuse to accept a “no” in worse contexts.

6. If the sex is bad initially, communicate more, practice more, and it’ll get better.

7. If it doesn’t get better with communication and practice, it’s probably best to move on, assuming sex matters to you.

8. Same goes for conversations: it’s normal if they’re a bit stilted at first, while you’re getting to know each other’s rhythms. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a mismatch, although it might, especially if it continues.

9. Making out in an alley after a date is a great way to assess potential physical/sexual compatibility without needing to invite the person to your home right away if you're not ready to do that.

10. Bring up the things that matter to you as early as possible/as early as feels appropriate, so as to weed out the people who aren’t on your level. This includes anything from political beliefs to sexual preferences to whether or not you want kids someday.

11. Always tell a friend, prior to a date, where you’re going, the full name of your date (if you know it), any other contact info you have for them, and when you expect to get back home.

12. Asking follow-up questions is an extremely underrated conversational skill. Do it more.

13. Using someone’s name in conversation – not a lot, but here and there – can feel memorably flirty because it gets their attention and fires off a little dopamine in their brain every time.

14. If you wear a low-hanging necklace, your date will probably stare at your chest at some point, but maybe you want that.

15. If someone asks you zero, or very few, questions about yourself, don’t see them again (unless you like them enough to put in the labor of running the whole conversation). You deserve to date people who find you interesting and know how to show it.

16. Different people feel differently about having sex on the first date; the important thing is to figure out how it makes you feel (or how you think it would make you feel), and make decisions accordingly. Slut-shaming and prude-shaming are both useless bullshit; you get to make your own sexual decisions based on what feels right for you.

17. It’s totally okay to ask someone what they’re looking for romantically/sexually. It might seem like an overly forward question, especially on a first date, but it’s important stuff to know upfront so neither of you end up wasting your time.

18. People tend to be on their best behavior on the first few dates, so if you’re already seeing hints of emotional manipulation, control issues, anger problems, etc., just know that they’re probably only gonna get worse from there.

19. The best, kindest, and truest way to reject someone is to make it about yourself. “I had a great time on our date, but I didn’t really feel the connection I’m looking for. Best of luck!”

20. That said, if you are rejecting someone for a very specific reason related to something legitimately egregious that they did or said (like being a dick to the waiter, making a racist joke, or taking weeks to text you back), it’s okay to tell them why. This will hopefully give them the kick in the pants they need to address that behavior so it won’t ruin their future romantic prospects.

21. Playing mind games is dull, exhausting, and often a sign that you don’t feel entirely safe or comfortable with the person you’re seeing. If you like them, let them know. If you feel like texting them, text them (within reason – use your social judgment). Don’t beat around the bush if that’s not who you are.

22. Put your phone away while you’re on a date, and focus fully on the person you’re talking to. If you literally can’t do that, because you’re waiting on some important medical news or you’re on call at work or something, maybe it’s not the best time to be going on a date.

23. “How’s your day been?” is a simple, great opening question if you don’t know how to get the conversational ball rolling on an early date.

24. It is okay (and often actually appreciated) to put your intentions and desires out there in a way that is clear and open, so long as you do so in such a way that the person can easily reject or postpone your advances if they want to (e.g. “I’d really like to kiss you right now; how would you feel about that?”).

25. Don’t assume your date drinks alcohol, or coffee, when picking a date location. (Offering a few different choices can be a way of handling this issue.) If your date opts not to drink booze while actually on the date, do not ask them why, as the reason is almost certainly personal.

26. Different people have different ways of texting – style, syntax, frequency, emoji usage, etc. – and it might take you a while to figure out what a new person’s “deal” is, texting-wise. Don’t freak out over a minor punctuation issue or delayed responses when you don’t even know what “normal” texting looks like for this person; they might just be very busy, or very direct, or unaware that the emoji keyboard exists.

27. If you haven’t already, glance at the news, Twitter trending topics, etc. before leaving for your date, so that you’ll have stuff to talk about even if the conversation has trouble getting off the ground.

28. If it doesn’t make you feel jealous or weird to do so, it can be fun to ask a date from Tinder, Bumble, etc. what their other experiences have been like on those apps. Often talking about this can be a goofy way to bond over the nearly-universal difficulties involved in dating.

29. It’s more important to feel confident and comfortable than it is to “look hot.”

30. Resist the temptation to censor the weirdest, nerdiest parts of yourself. When you act like someone else, you attract people who would be a good match for… someone else. When you act like you, you attract people who would be a good match for you. And that’s what dating is all about. Right?

Note: This is a blog post I drafted and ALMOST published in 2018, but ended up deciding to keep private after a few friends read it and said, "Yikes, babe. No." They were right – I was in far too emotional a place to decide whether to publicize something like this. But now more than 4 years have passed, and that ex has fucked off to the west coast, and this newsletter is a much more private outlet than my blog, so I think it's time to put it out into the world. Please forgive the cringeyness. Also, content note: lots of daddy dom/little girl stuff in this one. And also heartbreak stuff.

1. Oh. Fuck. Well, shit. Dammit. Why. Ugh. Fucking hell. No.

2. Does she appreciate him enough? Is she a good enough girl for him? Does she give him what he needs? I worry sometimes. I worry about him. About whether he's doing okay.

Last night I went on what was technically a third date. I say “technically” because our first and second dates happened 5 years ago.

We fell out of touch after those two dates for circumstantial reasons – not reasons related to a lack of attraction or interest on either of our parts, as both of those were present in abundance. We both got into other relationships and drifted out of each other’s lives, only to drift back into each other’s lives via a random Tinder re-match 5 years later.

Unlike right-wing politicians, when I invoke the George Orwell novel 1984, it’s not to make sweeping claims about my political enemies. Usually, it’s to tell people that their sexual fantasies are normal and fine.

People have all sorts of sexual fantasies, and some of those people wonder whether their fantasies are, in some sense, “immoral.” Is it bad, for example, to jerk off to the thought of your ex? What about your sister’s ex? What about your sister?

I am aware that the title of this essay sounds like some kind of bathroom-related thing that would be cringe to discuss in polite company. THAT IS NOT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I am talking about Tinder. SWIPING, NOT WIPING, PEOPLE. (Although you should also be wiping. I mean. You know that. Anyway. Sorry. Let’s proceed.)

I recently had the absurdly millennial experience of re-matching with someone who I went on two (2) dates with, five (5!) years ago. There was, and is, no ill will between us – I gathered that we were both pretty into each other, but ultimately he ghosted me for a while because of a (confirmed, legit) chronic illness he has, which flared up suddenly. He later apologized retroactively for the ghosting and explained the reason for it, which was a reason I had already considered. In fact, I would have already fully assumed it was the reason, if not for being wildly insecure (lol, fun).

Content note: discussions of – but not much detail about – trauma, emotional abuse, daddy dom/little girl roleplay, spanking, kink-shaming.

People make a lot of assumptions about you when you’re into DD/lg (daddy dom/little girl roleplay). One of the commonest and darkest of these is that the kink must have been caused by the presence of underlying “daddy issues.”

The phrase “daddy issues” is, itself, a red flag. It is a phrase which literally communicates that the person using it believes a victim of father-related trauma is both somehow responsible for that trauma and profoundly and permanently affected by it. It reduces a person, almost always a woman, to a sad little plant who grew from the seedling of how her father mistreated her – as if that is the totality of her being, as if she was not also enriched by the soil she grew in, the water she drank, the sun she photosynthesized.

Friends, I won't lie to you: "This is so demisexual" is something I have yelled at my TV on more than one occasion. [Insert butterfly meme of me looking at a perfectly standard piece of media that happens to link emotional intimacy with sexual intimacy and going, "Is this... demisexuality?"]

For those who don't know, demisexuality is an identity on the asexual spectrum, meaning that it exists somewhere between allosexuality (experiencing sexual attraction) and asexuality (not experiencing sexual attraction). Demisexuality is characterized by the need for some kind of emotional connection to exist before sexual attraction can be felt. This manifests in all sorts of different ways for different people, because human psychology is complicated. For instance, I can start to get horny for celebrities I've seen in many pieces of media (um, you read my thoughts on Bo Burnham, right?), purely because our parasocial relationship has made me feel like I have an emotional connection with them.

Anyway, sometimes I see stuff on TV and in movies that reads as very demisexual to me. It might be an "enemies to lovers" storyline in some medical drama, in which the characters' sexual chemistry seems to build with each deeply illuminating argument they have on screen, or it might be a high school rom com where two best friends suddenly realize they were each other's perfect match the whole time... or it might be a Netflix dating show where people are financially incentivized not to fuck each other.

Content note: As you may have guessed from the title, this essay will discuss psychedelic drugs and their effects on the human psyche.

Housekeeping note: Hi, friends! This is a rare “free for everyone” edition of Sub Missives; I hope you enjoy it! I wanted to let you know that the juiciest, most vulnerable and intimate content in this newsletter is only available to premium subscribers (i.e. paying subscribers), for the reasons that 1) I just don’t feel comfy publishing that stuff on the public internet for all to see and 2) a girl’s gotta eat and pay her bills. If you’d like to join so you can receive an essay every week about my innermost thoughts and oddest experiences related to love, sex, kink, and more, while supporting my work so I can keep doing it, you can sign up for a premium subscription for $5/month or $50/year at katesloan.email. Thanks, loves!

I almost made a terrible mistake while I was in a touring improv troupe. (And no, the mistake I’m referring to is not simply being in a touring improv troupe to begin with.)

My high school was an arts school that attracted students from all around the city. One of the ways we did this was a marketing strategy of sorts, known as “school tours.” This was where teachers would choose a select few students who enthusiastically excelled at music, dance, or improv, and would then take those students on a “tour” of several local middle schools so we could perform for their students in an assembly and entice them to apply to our school. We would do this for two weeks each October, during which time our teachers knew not to expect us to come to class or hand in assignments – because we were on TOUR, baybee!

I have always had intrusive thoughts about crushes, have always gotten people stuck in my head the way I get songs stuck in my head: they loop for days on end, maddening, all-consuming.

I’ve often wondered if there is a neurological basis for this, possibly having to do with dopamine. I’ve wondered this even more since reading neurologist Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia, which details (among other nerdy musical brain-science anecdotes) a number of cases in which certain brain injuries resulted in far more persistent and annoying musical “earworms.” I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a brain injury, but perhaps it’s a wiring problem. Who knows.

What I can tell you is that it gets very annoying at times. In the throes of it, I often find it difficult to think, let alone get any work done. I’ll become more interested in obsessively googling my crush, or posting hot selfies I hope they’ll enjoy, than doing anything of real value or purpose. I concoct absurd fantasies and replay them incessantly, automatically, in my mind. I’ll lose sleep staring at my phone or listening to podcasts the person has guested on or scrawling in my journal about how sad it is that I’ll never get to kiss them. I've been doing versions of this, on-and-off, for about 20 years.

But I am a big believer in working WITH one’s natural tendencies, not against them, whenever possible. There are a few ways I channel this obsessive energy into actual productivity and other positive outcomes.

Hi friends! Brief programming note: As you may have noticed, I've switched over from Substack to Buttondown. Substack has given enormous financial payouts to numerous people of questionable ethics (to say the least), most noticeably the genuinely dangerous and deeply bigoted blowhard Graham Linehan.

I've wanted to make this switch for quite some time but haven't had the spoons/energy, but fortunately, my extremely generous and smart spouse Matthew Bischoff helped me transfer things over, with the help of Buttondown founder Justin Duke. You will continue to be billed the same way at the same rate, so you don't need to do anything; everything has been transferred seamlessly so far as I can tell. Please let me know if you experience any interruptions or issues, but all should be fine as long as submissives@katesloan.email is in your email client's whitelist. Thanks for joining me on this journey!

I have a problem with change. It's a very Taurus-y quality. When a big life change is on the horizon, like moving house or ending a relationship, I am filled with trepidation and stubborn resistance.

I have been on Twitter since 2007 so I have tweeted some embarrassing and baffling things over the years. Here are some of those tweets, with commentary from modern-day me. We can all grow and change!

Oct. 19, 2007: "Danny the song & dance cat" from Cats Don't Dance is pretty much the sexiest dancing cat ever. He was also my first crush as a child.

In retrospect, I am surprised I announced, on Twitter, at age 15, that I had a crush on a cartoon cat. I would be embarrassed to tweet this today, though it is still true. Incidentally, I just looked into it and Danny was voiced by Scott Bakula, who is, y’know, cute but not really my type. I guess I just love gregarious weirdos who are way too into musical theatre, and are, maybe, cats.

Feb. 9, 2008: I really want Ryan Seacrest & Simon Cowell to have sex, if they haven't already. Shhh.

My inbox is habitually full of PR reps pitching their latest “libido-boosting” product. Supplements. Gels. Exercise regimens. CBD-infused soft drinks. Whatever.

The thing about “boosting one’s libido” is that the reasons for having a low sex drive in the first place are often not directly addressable with a product. I think this is especially true for anyone subject to systemic stress and oppression – women, trans people, people of color, etc. – and I also think it is especially true during a globally traumatic event like a pandemic. In many cases, it’s not a physical issue causing your libido to dwindle (although you could certainly check with your doctor just incase). No, I think most libido issues arise from our psychology. Stress. Trauma. Relationship tensions. Culturally-instilled body insecurities. Gender anxiety. You get the picture.

With that in mind, here’s a list of products that actually boost my libido…

A sleep mask and earplugs. Not necessarily for sensory deprivation play, although that too – but mainly I just use these to sleep better. When you sleep longer and more deeply, you have more energy, you’re less irritable with partners or potential partners, and you’re operating at a higher level in terms of mental and emotional processing. For me, this all means that when I’m sleeping well, I have better sex, and am able to enjoy it more. I think that makes sleep a worthy thing to invest in. (For the record, my favorite sleep mask is the Nidra Deep Rest, and I use Mack’s slim-fit soft foam earplugs.)

I often think about the correlations between my professional life and my personal life, the ways in which they mirror each other and teach me the same lessons.

I thought about that connection today, when – in a stern email to someone who had repeatedly asked if I would publish their spammy guest post, a service I do not offer – I typed, in bold, “No exceptions will be made under any circumstances.”

I stared at the sentence, and thought – first with amusement, and then with a tinge of sadness – what would have happened if I had held my boundaries just as firmly as this, in social and sexual situations, from the very beginning? What difficulties would I have been spared? Who would I have become?

I am a big fan of “personal policies,” loose little rules I create for myself that help guide me in the direction of my ideal life. I know that these do not work for everyone; many people have told me either that they slip into old unwanted behaviors too much if their own willpower is their only steward, or that setting rules for themselves feels too restrictive and doesn’t leave enough room for spontaneity. For me personally though, because I know that they aren’t hard-and-fast rules but merely strong suggestions that Past Me has made to Future Me based on intimate firsthand knowledge of myself, I find that having personal policies helps me a lot.

Yet again, a man on Reddit is insisting that “women are shallow” and that “women only want to date Chads with six-packs,” and yet again, I am laughing my ass off.

Let me be clear: it’s not that I take issue with this man feeling insecure about his physique; appearance-based strictures affect us all in this culture, and an unfortunate one for men is the proliferation of muscly bodies and the widespread sense that those bodies are what (straight and bi) women want.

But I can’t help laughing at this particular sentiment on this particular day, because 1) women are not a hive mind, and 2) I’ve just spent a solid hour getting horny over a gangly Twitch streamer because of his encyclopedic knowledge of Pokémon games.

This has been a hardcore quarantine hobby of mine – playing these games, which I’ve loved since childhood but hadn’t touched in several years, and watching other people play these games. Horniness is not habitually part of my gaming experience (I don’t play the porn games that people like Ana Valens write about), but intelligence and nerdiness are habitually part of my attractions, so it makes sense that I develop smouldering crushes on everyone from home improvement YouTubers to Jeopardy champions to, yes, Twitch streamers.

Succession is such a weird show. It centers on Waystar Royco, a fictional media conglomerate that’s sort of like a mix between Fox and Disney, and the people at the top of the corporate food chain therein: company CEO Logan Roy, his four adult children who all want to take over the CEO job someday, and the advisors and lackeys they employ. It’s a show about business, and capitalism, and trauma, and abuse. It’s a show about the ways that our earliest childhood experiences can shape who we are for the rest of our lives. It’s also, at times, a show about sex, attraction, eroticism, and power.

Because it amuses me to do so, in today’s newsletter I will be selecting sex toys that capture the essence of characters on this very popular show. Feel free to hit “reply” and let me know whether you agree with my picks!

I got home from New York two weeks ago and I have been luxuriating in my solitude.

I love my spouse, my friends, and my family very very much, so do not take that last sentence as a slight toward any of them. I just also love spending time alone. Not only do I love it – I need it. My brain seems to run at an optimal level when I’ve been afforded big chunks of 100% solo time recently. I think I’ve always been that way.

But since this is a newsletter ostensibly about sex, it bears mentioning that my sexuality also seems to benefit from me getting adequate alone time.

I remember that when I ended a 3.5-year-long relationship at age 22, I had this huge, expansive sense of sexual freedom – not just because I was able to date and fuck people who had been off-limits to me in my monogamous partnership, but because I felt like I was rediscovering my own body as my own body, rather than being a body that another person partially “owned” or at least had a vested interest in. My partner hadn’t demanded that I shave or stay clean for him; he hadn’t expected me to be sexually available to him at all hours of the day; he certainly hadn’t seen himself as the primary arbiter of my body – and yet somehow I had felt obligated in these ways nonetheless. I had felt it was my duty to look and feel and smell and taste a certain way for him. And now that I was single again, those responsibilities were just… gone.

Content note: daddy dom / little girl language

I love daddy doms. I have for years. But it’s not just a sexual thing.

When I say the phrase “daddy dom,” what I really mean is a kinky person who is dominant or dominant-leaning, and whose dominance manifests in a way that’s explicitly about caring for their submissive-leaning partner(s). Granted, even some of the more discipline-oriented dominants out there are doing what they do out of deep care and love, but I think what sets daddy doms apart from the others is that the caretaking is part of the “fiction” of the kink, part of its narrative for both/all participants, rather than being implicit subtext – and the caretaking is part of what both/all participants find hot.

Content note: There is a part in this essay where I take some drugs and it seems like I might be sexually assaulted or something, but don’t worry, I didn’t get assaulted and there is no assault or other sexual misconduct in this piece.

Something really weird just happened as I was brainstorming ideas for this week’s newsletter.

I was scrolling through old screenshots, hoping to happen upon a text conversation or sext-y interlude that would trigger a thought that would trigger a newsletter.

The fuckboy/fuckgirl/fuckperson who bangs you well but who you will never see again

The princes in Into the Woods are the closest characters to our modern understanding of the term “fuckboy” in any pre-1990 musical that I’m aware of. And in no song is this more apparent than “Any Moment,” the flirty and feather-light song Cinderella’s prince sings to the baker’s wife after they share a mutually extramarital tryst amongst the trees. It has the rhythm of a text exchange you’d have with someone who fucks incredibly well but who, you eventually discover, has no intention of ever seeing you again once the bloom is off the rose.

You: Idk if I can do drinks tonight, I have to get up early for work tomorrow…

Them: Aww cmon! I’ll make it worth your while ;)

Recently I went through the notes I’ve taken during my last several therapy sessions, and for each session, I distilled the main thing I learned into one sentence. Here are those one-sentence summaries of my last 25 sessions. I hope they give you some peace, or at least some food for thought – especially if you’re having a hard time right now due to being with family for the holidays. (These are written in all caps because they remind me of Jenny Holzer’s “Truisms,” which were always in all caps as well.)

1. CHANGE IS SCARY BUT ALSO EXCITING.

2. SINCERITY IS TERRIFYING BUT IT GETS YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

3. YOU DON’T NEED EVERYONE TO LIKE YOU AND IN FACT NO ONE IS UNIVERSALLY LIKED.

4. WORKING THROUGH CONFLICTS WITH HONESTY AND INTEGRITY IS ALLOWED TO BE A SLOW PROCESS.

5. YOU ARE ONLY HUMAN AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU SHOULD ACCEPT THAT (WITHIN REASON).

6. THERE IS NOTHING INHERENTLY WRONG WITH HAVING COPING MECHANISMS BUT THEY CAN BE LIMITING AT TIMES.

7. OTHER PEOPLE’S NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY YOUR RESPONSIBILITY OR YOUR FAULT.

8. YOU WILL INEVITABLY HURT PEOPLE; THE TRICK IS TO AVOID HURTING PEOPLE INTENTIONALLY.

9. THERE IS NO POINT IN ENGAGING WITH SOMEONE WHO REFUSES TO VIEW YOU AS A HUMAN BEING.

10. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL PROUD OF YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND IN FACT YOU SHOULD.

11. REST AND LEISURE ARE YOUR BIRTHRIGHT AND “WORK ETHIC” IS A CAPITALIST CONSPIRACY.

12. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PARTNER YOU “DESERVE,” ONLY A PARTNER YOU WANT WHO WANTS YOU BACK.

13. STRUGGLE AND PAIN ARE NOT THE ONLY MEASURES OF ACHIEVEMENT.

14. THE “9-TO-5” LIFESTYLE DOESN’T WORK FOR EVERYONE AND THAT’S OKAY.

15. MAKING MISTAKES IS PART AND PARCEL OF BEING HUMAN.

16. MAKING MISTAKES DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A FAILURE WHO DESERVES TO DIE.

17. THERE ARE NO “GOOD PEOPLE” OR “BAD PEOPLE,” JUST PEOPLE WHO MAKE VARIOUS CHOICES.

18. AVOIDANCE IS SOMETIMES A GOOD COPING MECHANISM BUT ONLY IN THE SHORT-TERM.

19. HYPERVIGILANCE AND HYPER-SCRUTINY KILL CREATIVITY.

20. HETEROPATRIARCHAL AND ABLEIST NARRATIVES ARE NOT MANDATES.

21. IT IS RARELY IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO REPLY TO SOMEONE WHILE ACTIVELY ANGRY OR UPSET.

22. IT IS OFTEN MORE IMPACTFUL AND LESS HARMFUL TO CRITICIZE SYSTEMS THAN INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE.

23. SELF-COMPASSION IS NECESSARY AND TRANSFORMATIVE.

24. ABUSE IS NEVER THE FAULT OF THE VICTIM.

25. YOUR HEALING IS NOT CONTINGENT UPON THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OR REPENTANCE OF YOUR ABUSER.

Content note: This essay discusses the nonconsensual sexualization of minors (namely, me) by older internet strangers.

I was 14 when I started posting outfit photos almost every day on Flickr, and strangers started having Opinions about my pictures almost immediately.

The comments I received were a mix of 4 basic categories:

Content note: This essay will touch on sexual assault and coercion, alcohol, victim-blaming, and rape apologism. I should also say that I’m writing this how I remember it, which may or may not be fully accurate to what actually happened.

In the 12th grade, I took a class called Writer’s Craft, which ended up teaching me a vital lesson about feminism.

The class was a broad survey of various different writerly forms. We studied, and then wrote, everything from Shakespearian sonnets to sitcom scripts. Toward the end of the year, we were tasked with doing some journalism of sorts: going out into the world, interviewing people, and writing about what we learned.

Note: This is an article I wrote in 2020 for a sex toy company who have since majorly fucked me over (not in the fun way), so I feel no qualms about sharing it here 😂 Hope you enjoy!

There are lots of skills you learn as a person with chronic clinical depression. How to explain your mental health history to a new doctor. How to procure yourself a decent meal when you can barely get out of bed. How to gently decline a social invitation when chipper small-talk feels impossible. One of the skills I’ve had to learn in my journey is how to adjust my sex life when depression comes a-knockin’.

Contrary to popular belief, depression doesn’t automatically drain the sexual desire from those it afflicts. Mental health advocate JoEllen Notte conducted an informal study of depressed folks for her book The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren’t Having, and found that more than a quarter of her respondents reported an increase in libido during depressive episodes.

For nearly 10 years, I have been receiving the same type of feedback when I tell people that part of my job entails testing and reviewing sex toys. “Must be nice!” people will say, or “So you get paid to masturbate?!” or “How can I get that job?!” That last one particularly annoys me, because this is not really a job you get, it’s a job you make, a job you choose and chase and work toward (and it is, itself, a privilege to have the time and money to do that). No one taps you on the shoulder with a dildo-shaped sceptre and says “I now pronounce you a sex toy reviewer.”

I am well aware how whiny and spoiled it makes me sound to shout “Putting pleasurable objects on my genitals for a living isn’t all fun and games, you know!!” but I really feel that most people don’t know what they are actually talking about when they say it sounds like a desirable job. It is a desirable job, but for me, the desirability is moreso about the flexible schedule, the largely self-directed workflow, the ability to be my own boss. The actual testing-sex-toys part is not always pleasant or fun, in the same way that it’s not always pleasant or fun for a book critic to slog through the latest schlocky tome, knowing they’re on deadline to write a polished, thoughtful essay about it. People tend to get into literary criticism because they love books – and, likewise, I got into sex toy criticism because I love sex toys – but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t work, and sometimes work is annoying and boring.

There are times when sex toy reviewing thrills me to my very core. These tend to be times when a toy genuinely surprises me with how good or interesting it is, or when a company I love releases a new toy and I get to try it before almost anyone else.

However, there are many, many times when it feels more like being a book critic who has to review the latest Fifty Shades novel. “Again? Another one? And it’s as bad as all the previous ones? What can I even say about this? Will the publisher get angry if I describe the book (accurately) as terrible? What if it’s actually just mediocre and dull? What can I say that hasn’t been said before? What can I say that is true, and also interesting to read, and also won’t piss off the author, and also won’t make me fall asleep at my keyboard as I’m writing it?”